


where the spirit meets the bone

by reybencyera



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Cuddling & Snuggling, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Nightmares, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), and they receive them, in-dream violence, into the unknown aka ben solo's psyche, no one was harmed in the making of this nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29345115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reybencyera/pseuds/reybencyera
Summary: “Rey,” he croaked, throat hoarse with tears, “I don’t know how to be the person you want me to be—”She shushed him, a tear slipping out of the corner of her eye as she shook her head.“This is enough. Here and now is enough.”⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆a quick post-tlj oneshot in celebration of valentine's day and reylo being soon to hit 25,000 fics on ao3 😌
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	where the spirit meets the bone

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a while since i wrote anything but we're rolling with it. congrats reylos, we're almost to 25,000 fics under the rey/ben|kylo tag!! love that for us.
> 
> anyways here this is
> 
> (if you used to read my last story and notice that i haven't updated that one for months no you don't,,,, i'll do it eventually)

_Kylo rose up over her, Rey’s furious and ever-defiant face glaring up at him from the ground where she lay. Although her face was all hardened ferocity, a glimmer of something more vulnerable was nestled behind her eyes, a plea for a man who no longer existed to come back to her before he did something he would regret until the end of his days. Nevertheless, he swung his crossguard up in one sharp move, and, bringing his arms down with a violent swing, he-_

Ben jolted awake, scenes from his latest nightmare moving like incorporeal phantoms across his sight. Remembering the terror in dream-Rey’s eyes, the same way she’d looked at him in the throne room as Snoke had ordered him to strike her down, it was…

Unthinkable. Utterly unthinkable. 

Sitting up suddenly from his bed, he resolved to do something to try to rid his mind of the dream _and_ the memory. Just as he’d decided to work on some paperwork Hux had sent his way earlier in the night, a crackling stillness filled the air, a sensation that he hadn’t felt since the battle of Crait a few standard weeks earlier. 

Sighing and not bothering to turn his head ( _yet_ ), he flicked a couple of tears that had made their way down his face off under the guise of rubbing his eyes. 

Standing from the bed slowly, he turned around to face the spitfire he was sure would greet him with all the anger he was due, but was surprised to find his bondmate looking… haunted. As though she’d been seeing as many ghosts as he had lately. 

Meeting his eyes with an accusatory glare, he heard her faintly mutter, “Ren,” in greeting before turning to examine something on her left side. 

So yeah, maybe he deserved that. He wasn’t able to look back on the day he’d killed Snoke with much else other than embarrassment and wounded feelings. Embarrassment because he’d made an utter ass of himself— foisting some half-baked proposal at her after calling her nothing, razing Crait like a lover scorned, even inadvertently sending troops to fire on her, as he’d learned after the fact ( _and_ why _hadn’t she been off-planet_ , _she was_ supposed _to be off-planet—)._

A lot to be repentant for, obviously. But he was just as hurt as he could feel she was that day. 

Striking down the one creature who’d always said he _cared_ about whether Kylo was dead or alive, suddenly being free of that oppressive presence in his mind, the whirlwind sensation of diving head-first into love with the fierce, scrappy woman who’d been his enemy less than a week earlier. It was all… a lot. 

Still, though, the waves of hurt he could feel emanating off her now so resonated with what he’d been feeling for their entire estrangement that he couldn’t help but shift a little closer; couldn’t help but unconsciously lift his hand a few inches as though to stroke her tear-soaked cheek before he realized what he was doing. 

Instead, he took a deep breath and lowered himself back down onto his bed with a sigh. 

“So I take it we both haven’t had the best night?” he quipped, not sure what he was trying to accomplish but forging along anyway. 

Rey grunted noncommittally in his general direction and he took that as his cue to carry on. 

“I had a nightmare, actually. Woke up a few minutes before you decided to pop your head in.”

Now _that_ provoked a reaction out of her. 

“As you well know, _Supreme Leader,”_ she hissed icily, “I can’t choose when this— _whatever it is_ decides to open up any more than you can.”

He probably shouldn’t have reveled in her anger as he did, but it was at least better than the distant numbness he’d been expecting. He knew better than to smirk, not wanting whatever this conversation was to cause an actual duel, but he allowed himself a bit of gratification anyway. 

“What’s with the use of those titles?” he questioned her after allowing her to settle down for a moment. “I thought you were content with living in the past.”

“And I thought you had no desire to revisit it.”

He was struck silent for a second, asking himself why it bothered him when she of all people refused to use his birth name. 

“I don’t,” he replied uncertainly, unsatisfied with his ponderings. 

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a minute or so, Kylo eventually grabbing the datapad on his desk simply to have something to do rather than stare at the wall as she appeared to be content doing. 

He was surprised to hear Rey speak up of her own volition. “I had a nightmare as well, if you must know,” she muttered, angry at him or the Force or the galaxy at large; she hadn’t made up her mind yet. 

Carefully placing his datapad back onto his nightstand, he slid down further onto his back until his feet almost went past the edge of the bed. He really should request an upgrade at some point, especially if the bond planned to bring Rey to him for more nightly excursions. 

“What about?” he asked tentatively, prepared for her to fire back furiously and close the bond out of her own sheer force of will. However, she simply took a long, shaky breath and picked at her short nails.

“Us,” she replied quietly, not looking up at him. “Sitting on some dark side, maybe a Sith, throne. There were screams of terror all around us. I— it almost tempted me for a moment, before…”

She trailed off. Kylo tried to allow her time to explain, and for himself to take in her use of the word _us_ to describe her and him, but after an extended pause he murmured, “Before?” in the gentlest tone he could muster up. 

Her eyes looked hollowly down at his- her- sheets as she replied, “Before I heard _their_ screams. Finn, Rose, Poe— my friends. And… and your mother.”

He closed his eyes tightly, the pure, unadulterated revulsion in her voice enough to push him to the brink… though of what, he couldn’t say for certain. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing how else to reply.

“You haven’t done anything,” she paused. “At least, you weren’t the cause of that dream… it’s _me_ who’s the problem.”

She got up from the bed, wrapping her arms around herself in a pale imitation of the embraces he imagined she’d never received as a child. 

“ _Rey,”_ he mumbled, suddenly impassioned, “there’s nothing _wrong_ with you, everyone inevitably feels the pull to the dark side, it’s just the nature of the Force. And sometimes… dreams like that aren't just _dreams._ Skywalker— Luke— he once taught about visions, premonitions that the Force sometimes sends our way.”

She turned to him in horror, as though she couldn’t believe he’d suggest such a thing, “That nightmare will _never_ come true, Ben. I won't let it. I won’t let _you—”_

“Let me _what,_ Rey, because the last time I checked _you_ were the one having the vision—”

“And what exactly was _your_ nightmare about, Kylo? I feel the weight of it in your mind.”

Her words sucked the breath right out of him. “You— you don’t want to know. And I don't know that I can bring myself to tell you.”

Uncertainly looking into his wild eyes, she took a couple steps closer, approaching near enough that she had to tilt her head to meet his gaze. 

With steadily growing concern, she noted that tears had begun to well in his eyes, and his breath came out in harsh bursts. 

Sending a silent query into his erratic mind, she watched as he gave her a slight nod. Raising her arms up from her sides, she extended her fingers toward his temples and watched as his eyes slammed shut and a couple of errant tears squeezed out. 

Placing her fingertips lightly on the sides of his head, she let out an unsteady breath at the spark that always erupted when their bare skin brushed. 

Shutting her eyes along with him, she allowed him to hesitantly drag her into his memory. He whispered a vague warning to her before finally allowing her to see it. 

She took in the scene before her, with her on the ground in radiant robes of gleaming white, somehow unsullied by the soot of the battlefield around her, and him, towering over her like an omen of death, more terrifying and brutal than he’d ever appeared to her in real life. His mask was carved in half down the middle like an open wound, and his clothes were so tattered they were practically shredded. 

She gasped in recognition of what was about to happen as nightmare-Kylo raised his saber, preparing to swing, preparing to—

Ben yanked her from his mind before the action could progress any further and she reeled back from him. 

“Rey.” His voice that was always so wobbly was now practically fracturing out of his grief and _guilt ;_ he took a few steps around the bed, not allowing himself to get too close to her, and crumpled in on himself. 

She took him in as he wept on the ground in front of her. This entirely broken man who’d never known a day of peace in his life, whose worst fear was killing his so-called mortal enemy— by the _Maker,_ why had she allowed him to root so deeply into her soul? 

She felt his pain as if it was her own and (though there was a healthy dose of fear after the scene she’d just witnessed) she found that she wanted— no, she _needed_ them to comfort each other as she was sure only they would be able to. 

And so, crouching to the floor without another thought, she hesitantly reached out one of her hands to push his hair back from his face. She’d been wanting to do it since that night by the fire and— now that she had— she found she quite liked the sensation. 

He looked up at her— and how _wasn’t_ she supposed to let this enigma of a man into her soul when he looked at her like she’d arranged all the celestial bodies of the galaxy herself— and reached a hand out slowly, as though afraid she’d snap at him like a feral dog. She reached out the rest of the distance and suddenly, miraculously, their hands were fully clasped. 

Trying to rearrange his long limbs herself so that she had more room to maneuver, she reached out her arms for him, deciding that if this was the only moment they were allowed to be with one another like this, she was going to make the best of it. She wrapped her arms around his much denser body, stroking the soft cloth of his sleep shirt beneath her fingertips.

He remained still for several moments, growing looser against her with every synchronous breath of theirs. Finally, he buried his head in her undone hair, his full lips barely brushing the top of her ear. 

She rested her forehead against the dip between his neck and shoulder, closing her eyes and losing herself in the softness she now realized he was capable of. 

“Rey,” he croaked, throat hoarse with tears, “I don’t know how to be the person you want me to be—”

She shushed him, a tear slipping out of the corner of her eye as she shook her head. 

“This is enough. Here and now is enough.”

She felt him shift his head against hers, his mouth coming close enough for him to press an almost-there kiss against the curve of her neck. 

“We’ll— _I’ll_ figure this out, Rey. I promise. The Force doesn’t give us something like this bond and then let us be separated.”

“Bond,” she whispered, “I like that. Where did you read it?”

“We can talk about it another time. Just let me hold you.”

And so she did just that, crawling closer until she was perched on his lap, his arms wrapped around her lower back and drawing her in as close to his chest as he was capable of. 

The security that she felt nestled this close to his body should’ve felt wrong but instead… it just felt like home. One she’d never had but thought she was maybe beginning to discover in him. 

“We don’t… need to talk about the nightmares, if you don’t want to,” she whispered to him, her nose rubbing against his as their foreheads remained pressed together. “We don’t want the things in them to happen, and together we can… we can make sure they don’t.”

With not nearly half of her confidence (he’d never in his life felt the kind of pure hope that his scavenger seemed to constantly radiate) he nodded his head, shuddering a bit at the thought of what they’d seen. 

“Ben,” she interrupted his spiraling. “Focus on me. Right here, right now. We’re alive. We’re safe.”

She paused. “I know you would never hurt me.”

Hopeless and tired and so, so defeated, he interjected, “How can you _possibly_ —”

“I know because I would never be able to hurt you,” she replied swiftly. “It would be like severing half of my own being… don’t you feel it?”

He did. He'd never been certain of a thing in his entire life except for the tie he had with this girl, the depth of emotion he could feel swirling between them on a circuit loop. 

“Of course I do,” he whispered to her intensely, dark eyes burning into her lighter ones. 

Her mouth hung slightly open, her lips soft and pink like some fine Corellian delicacy his mother would let him have a taste of before she sent him to bed. He suddenly had the intense urge to kiss her. 

Judging by the direction her eyes had wandered, she felt the same way. He closed his eyes and slowly crossed the final few inches that they’d allowed between them, wondering for a moment what this kiss would feel like. 

Oh, he’d had a couple of flings with his fellow padawans years ago, but he suspected that nothing would compare to the way it felt to have your Force-given soulmate’s mouth pressed against yours for the first time. Would it electrify them the way their hands touching for the first time had? Would it be even more otherworldly?

Rey breached the final distance, not willing to waste whatever time was left in this impromptu meeting sitting and pondering on past experiences. Reaching up to grasp his jaw on both sides, she brought his head down to hers and kissed someone (and not just _someone:_ Ben, _her_ Ben) for the first time in her young life. 

It probably should have been awkward, all things considered. They were sitting almost uncomfortably close for a kiss, they’d both had very limited experience in those types of things, tears still marked trails down their flushed faces. But, despite it all, there was no embarrassment or shy fumbling before they figured out exactly what to do. 

There was only a world shattering and rebuilding in their minds, their _mind_ , for the sense of oneness they found within each other became so all-consuming they seemed to be one being, never to be separated by petty matters of life or death. Forever connected in the Force and the cosmos that flowed around them, circling them, creating a vortex around them for one precious millisecond before they came down from the high of their physical connectedness. Pulling back from each other, they each searched the other’s eyes with trepidation that soon turned to relief at the answering assurance they found there. 

In a dreamy haze, Ben hoisted her up into the air, laying them down in his bed and not separating from his beloved for even a second more than he could help. When she was eventually taken from him, there was a peaceful sadness, a knowledge that although they were being separated they would meet again soon, whether it be in dreams or the Force or the flesh. And so their consciousnesses found their ways back to their own realities, where they both slept easily for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading everyone, i hope you enjoyed it. also i love comments i crave validation like dat. i'm @reybencyera on twitter if you would like to follow me ;)


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